Day 3: Dunes, lighthouses and villages.

Thursday September 9 is going to be a day of driving, stopping and exploring the area.

The inn offers a daily breakfast buffet, and also a choice of one of two hot breakfast offerings, different  each morning. Today's hot breakfast is either scrambled eggs and sausages or eggs Benedict, but I opt for granola and a banana. We sit on the enclosed porch, and watch a surprising number of late seventies and early eighties Mercedes cars go by. It turns out there is a mercedes taxi cab company in the area, which uses exclusively older models. Kind of a neat idea.


It is definitely shorts weather again. We drive to the outer coast of the Cape directly facing the Atlantic Ocean rather than the bay, to walk on the beach. This is part of the Cape Cod National Sea Shore. We cross the dunes and step onto a real (i.e. salt water) beach for the first time in a while. There is a pretty strong wind, as you would expect on a beach. The tide seems to be coming in, the water comes a little further up the beach with each wave. I collect some smooth stones for my jars (bookends) and find a "gold" bracelet on the beach, value unknown, I suspect it is an Avon-special, because it has no weight to it. Clumps of seaweed have washed ashore that look like a mop. It's there to remind me that the one thing I didn't finish before we left is mopping the kitchen floor.

Walking on the beach is good exercise, especially the inclined access paths through the dunes. We visit herring cove beach, race point beach, and then continue our way past the municipal airport to the visitor center, where once again, no one knows about any currently exposed ship wrecks. (Again a very disappointed photographer, who really wanted to see something like this.) The building is again very nice, and there is an upper level with a lookout deck. From the boards on the  deck we learn that these dunes are a result of humans putting too much cattle on the land and harvesting too much wood. This eroded the soil, and caused the sand to appear. Apparently the forest used to come right up to the sea. The question is whether we should let the landscape revert back to that. It is a tough question. The area is absolutely beautiful, but the sea is slowly eating away at it. Decisions, decisions.

The white building on the horizon in this picture (taken from the observation deck) is the same building as you see in the photo above it.


We move on to the Highland Lighthouse and museum in Truro. The original wooden lighthouse on that location was authorised by George Washington, and it was the oldest lighthouse on Cape Cod. The current lighthouse structure was in danger of falling into the sea from erosion of the dune cliff, but the community managed to raise the money to move the lighthouse 453 feet back from the water. (The coastguard and the state of Massachusetts chipped in too.) Once it was jacked up and on steel beams, the actual move took 19 days. Ivory soap was used to allow it to slide over the steel beams. That just shows you that sometimes the basics are still the best. The cost was U$ 1.54 million, a figure that I find actually surprisingly low, considering the time and effort involved, and the outrageous price tags I hear for projects in the City of Ottawa.

This link takes you to a video on YouTube which shows the move of the building using time lapse photography.

We climb the spiral staircase to the top of the lighthouse, and enjoy the view. The strobe light seems very dim from up close.The photographer makes his contribution navigational safety by cleaning the windows of the lighthouse to his own standards with tissue paper. (Before taking pictures, of course.) 

You can see the Pilgrim Monument in P-town in the center of the horizon.

Look carefully, you can see his reflection, three times!

On the spot where the lighthouse used to stand is now an observation platform. You have to stay on it, because the dune cliff is highly unstable, and chunks could shear off any time. The drop has to be about 75 feet or more.

We move on in search of lunch, and through driving around find ourselves in Wellfleet, one of the cutest little hidden communities we saw there. We have lunch on the patio at in Winslow's Tavern on the main street, figs stuffed with roasted Gorgonzola on spring greens for me, swordfish skewer with sauteed peppers for the photographer. The iced tea is real! (For anyone familiar with my recent rant.)

We decide to continue to explore the outer rim, and make our way along route 28, seeing all sorts of pretty houses and spots to stop, get out, go to the water and take a picture. We eventually end up spending some time browsing  in Chatham, a cute area with a main street full of little shops, and the best stocked bookstore I have seen in years. Nearby is the Chatham lighthouse, and a beach where sometimes seals visit. It appears that they are out with those beavers from Franconia Notch. (i.e: not home) We get a coffee to go in a little shop, and continue on the road. The only disappointing area we come across is around Barnstable airport, where the neighbourhood looks decidedly un-cape cod-ish. We make our way back to P-town via the bay side shore, and drop the car at the hotel.

We then walk up to the shoreline in P-town and take some pictures while the sun is going down over the water. While we stroll along the water near the harbour, a church bell keeps ringing at a slow steady pace, giving this eerie feeling of "disaster in a fishing village". I can't figure out where it comes from, and when I ask around the next day, people look at me funny.


This evening we end up eating pasta at Bubala's by the bay. They have the heaters out on their patio which is on Commercial street side (as opposed to on the water's side.) We watch the people walk by on the street, most of the stores are still open, and there is almost as many people walking around as during the daytime.

This evening's movie is The break-up. It's all right, but I just can't imagine why she would have stayed with him for two years. Is it so hard for Hollywood to write a more complicated (i.e. real) character?